like to think,' it whispered insidiously. 'Maybe they aren't anywhere near as powerful as you think. Maybe you aren't as insignificant as they would like to make you think.'
That's all very well, she told it sullenly, But what exactly am I supposed to do to prove how free I am?
The voice finally went silent then, having no solutions to offer. After all, it was nothing more than her own stubborn rebellion.
Still, that was a point. Lorryn called the second Wizard War 'a draw at best, a rout at worst,' and he did not mean for the halfblood side. What if the power of the High Lords had weakened? Did that mean there was room for a female to make a life for herself, in the midst of the High Lords' scramble to retain what they had?
'Bend your head, please, my lady.'
But how? That was the real question. How to escape the dreary life that had been laid out for her from the moment of her birth? These plans had a life of their own, rolling along whether or not she agreed to them.
And Father can force me if he wants to. That was another fact. He could visit any number of unpleasant punishments on her if she refused to cooperate. He could confine her to a single room on starvation meals.
He could even lock a slave-collar on me, and coerce me to obey with magic. She had heard rumors of that happening to some maidens, faced with exceedingly unpleasant husbands-to-be. It was easy enough to conceal such a device in a piece of elaborate jewelry; such things were constructed for favored slaves all the time. She felt her throat close and her breath come shorter at the very idea. She quickly controlled herself, before the slaves noticed.
No, there was no escape for her—only the minimal freedom she had now, as the daughter rather than the wife. But if only there were!
Not that I have any idea what I would do, she admitted to herself. It was just that she had been feeling so stifled for such a long time, locked up in the bower, doing next to nothing, listening to the gossip of the slaves.
But as she watched the slaves braiding and arranging her hair in the mirror, she was struck by how much she did resemble her mother. And an uncomfortable thought occurred to her. Had Lady Viridina always been the perfect elven lady? Or had she been forced to pretend that she was, until the last of her spirit faded, and the pretense became reality, the facade became fact?
Could that happen to me?
A very uncomfortable thought, that. Sheyrena turned away from it nastily. There was not and never had been a sign that Lady Viridina was anything but what she appeared to be. Sheyrena was not her mother. Viridina could never understand her.
If only I'd been born a boy… Another thought-path, this one worn by travel. If only she had been born a male, Lorryn's little brother instead of his sister They were nearly as close as brothers anyway, for despite custom to the contrary, because of his mother's obsessive need to oversee his welfare, Lorryn had spent plenty of time in the bower instead of being sequestered away with a series of male tutors. Viridina encouraged this, and even dropped her fanatic watchfulness whenever her son and daughter were together. He had shared plenty of lessons with Sheyrena as they grew. She had trailed along after him countless times, dressed in his castoffs, without anyone seeming to notice. Even now he smuggled her out in disguise as a male slave, sharing rides and hunts with her, whenever their father wasn't in residence. Discipline was relaxed whenever Lord Tylar was gone; there wasn't such a close watch kept, and Lorryn's age and status kept awkward questions from being asked.
She enjoyed the rides, although the inevitable conclusion of the hunts generally made her feel sick and she avoided the kill whenever possible. It was Lorryn who had told her most of what she knew about the real conclusion of what he called 'the second Wizard War.'
'Please close your eyes, my lady.'
Sheyrena obeyed the request, and continued to follow her own thoughts. She assumed Lorryn picked up most of what he knew from the other el-Lords, the young heirs and younger sons that he saw socially. Most of what Lorryn had told her, she suspected, was not anything their elders would approve of her hearing. -Very little of it was flattering; Lorryn and his contemporaries did not have a high opinion of their elders' intelligence or ability.
She had the feeling that Lorryn secretly admired the now-deceased Valyn, Lord Dyran's heir, who had actually joined forces with the wizards, turning traitor to his own kind. Lorryn swore that he had done so to save his presumably halfblooded brother, Mere; though how he could know that, she hadn't a clue. He seemed obsessed with that part of the story, but as for her, she could not hear enough about the dragons.
Oh, the dragons…
The slaves were working on her face now, with tiny brushes and pots of cosmetic, trying to give her some semblance of a living person. That was going to be difficult to do; her hair was the palest white-gold imaginable, and her face completely without color in its natural state, her eyes so pale a green as to seem gray. Anything they did with cosmetics was doomed to look artificial. At the best, she would resemble a porcelain statue; at worst, a clown.
At the moment, she was inclined to hope for the clown.
Lorryn had also been the one to tell her about the Elvenbane, who summoned the dragons. Some of what he had told her she had also overheard when her father had made conversation with guests, but not that. Her father never even acknowledged that any such creature existed.
That wasn't particularly surprising. The Elvenbane was female and halfblood, and must represent everything Lord Tylar hated and feared.
But if I could choose anything other than a boy—
If I was the Elvenbane, there would be no father to stop me, nothing I couldn't do if I wanted to. I could go anywhere, see anything, be anything that I wished!
She settled back into her daydreams as the slaves worked on her face, tiny brushes flicking across her cheeks, lips, and eyelids with the kiss of a thousand butterflies. She envisioned herself mounted on a huge scarlet dragon, soaring under a cloudless sky, so high above the forest that the trees blurred into a mossy carpet of green and there was no sign of walls or buildings. In her dreaming, the dragon carried her toward the mountains she had never seen, which rose to meet them, towering spires sparkling with fantastic crags of crystal and rose quartz, amethyst and—
A polite cough woke her out of her dream. Regretfully she opened her eyes and regarded the handiwork of the slaves in her mirror.
It was appalling. It was also the best they could do, and she knew it. Her eyes were washed out by the heavy peacock-blue they had painted on her lids; her cheeks had hectic red circles that looked as clownlike as she had imagined, and her rosy, pouting lips simply did not look as if they belonged on her face.
She dared not approve it, but she did not disapprove either. If Lord Tylar didn't like it, let him be the one to say so.
When she said nothing, the slaves went back to the final arrangement of her hair.
Left alone, it was her one beauty, but they were building it into an edifice that would match the dress, and as a result, it looked like a wig made of bleached horsehair. They had piled most of it on the top of her head in stiff curls, coils, and braids, leaving only a few tendrils, stiffened with dressing and trained into wirelike spirals, to trail artificially about her face. Now they were inserting all the bejeweled hair ornaments her father had dictated; heavy gold and emerald, of course.
If I had been dressing myself—I would have chosen the pale rose silk, with flowers and ribbons, pearls and white gold. Nothing like this. I would fade into the background, but at least I would not look like a clown.
By the time they were done, no one would ever recognize her. Which was just as well. She wouldn't want anyone to recognize her, looking like this.
It wouldn't have been so bad if only Lorryn could be with her. He'd have been able to make her laugh, he'd have helped her to keep her sense of humor about it all, and he would have kept anyone she actually disliked from getting too close. But Lorryn was subject to spells of terrible pain in his head—the one affliction that elves were subject to—and he had been overcome by one of those spells just this morning.
It's just as well. I wouldn't even want Lorryn to see me looking like this.
